Our favourite and most impressive book of the week has to be the classic Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo by the anthropologist Henry Ling Roth .
In two solid volumes published in 1896, Roth uses an extraordinary range of field notes and observations from different sources to cover...
Over the centuries, Spain has had reason to celebrate many victories. While the most recent is its Football World Cup win, perhaps more enduring is its claim to have produced the world’s first novel.
Miguel de Cervantes published his great work El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, or...
America is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. We all have our images of the growing country, an enduring one is that of New York. Renowned not only for its life, both commercial and cultural, New York also stimulates images of growth...
Literature in the first half of the 20th century is noted for challenging society’s view of morality. Writers such as James Joyce, D H Lawrence and Radclyffe Hall, along with their bold publishers, pushed the boundaries, fighting increasingly out-dated obscenity laws. While they may have lost early battles in the...
George Bernard Shaw was known for his wit, wisdom, socialism and empathy for those who struggle against the structures of a prim society.
In 1928 the pioneering lesbian writer Radclyffe Hall published The Well Of Loneliness. This portrayal of women in love was declared obscene in a landmark trial, many...
With Valentine’s Day, the thoughts turn to love, and of course love has no boundaries, national or cultural. English literature abounds with love poetry, and novels charting the troubled courses of love and marriage and relationships.
Robert Graves wrote on the love and relations between men and women, from...
Almanacs, early calendars, have a centuries-long history. We have one dated 1656 in excellent condition, despite the frequent use that these publications would have had in a household.
This work was made by the most important astrologer in England at the time, William Lilly. who published almanacs between 1647 and 1682...
It’s the time of the year when we are assaulted with retail advertising: In a strange way we have moved full circle. The growing dominance of on-line shopping echoes back to a time when retail excitement was brought about by the anticipation of the next catalogue in the mail.
A...
New Zealand parks and gardens are blooming with spring and early summer flowers. It is often the botanical art which shows the pale beauty and details lost by the casual eye.
The finest set of watercolours of New Zealand flora was published by the Sarah and Edward Featon. Sarah as...
As the southern hemisphere rugby championship concludes, and the northern begins - the experience can be enriched by investigating rugby books, photos and ephemera, in addition to being glued to the screen.
One of the earliest late 19th century accounts of the game was written by Frederick Marshall, schoolmaster, cleric...
There can’t be many places in the old British Empire which didn’t have some connection with Jane Austen and her family. Her novels will have travelled all around the world with early settlers and travellers.
Jane’s brother Edward's grandsons, Arthur and Richard, emigrated to New Zealand in 1852, buying a....
As Fathers' Day approaches, we look back to the 19th C. There are plenty of fathers. Male writers, travellers, naturalists, and explorers dominate. But now and again you notice relationships between fathers and sons which intrigue.
One of those is the handing down of a book through generations. The Rev...
In the 18thC science, travel and exploration, connections were all important, leading to intriguing networks.
The Swedish naturalist and father of taxonomy Carl Linnaeus sent out 17 of his ‘Apostles’ to collect plant and animal specimens from around the world, adding to his great work on the classification of species...
The Indian State Railway of the 19th and 20th centuries was one of the wonders of the modern world.
How it all worked was a mystery, with chaotic stations, the luggage and people on the roof, cha sellers, the extraordinary platform crowds, and the kind old women smiling at and...
King’s Birthday promotes thoughts of past and present members of the Royal family. Second in line to the throne is the young Prince George, and his earlier namesakes seemed to abound from the 18th C and onwards. Without social media, it is photographs, signatures and letters that make them visible
...
Geopolitics often takes centre stage in history, and never more so than in the Wars of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). When Britian, Austria and the Dutch allied themselves against the French in trying to determine who succeeded the childless Charles II on the Spanish throne.
There are few better visual...
If you don’t have enough hours in the day to collect insects, then how about suggesting that the clocks be adjusted to allow more daylight hours. As we turn our clocks back from summertime, we might remember that one of New Zealand’s finest entomologists, George Hudson, was also one of...
Boy comics were big in England, running as serials, through the middle of the 20th C, particularly during wartime and into the fifties. They ran thrilling adventure stories, tales of heroic acts in the war, and comic strips. Their characters were clearly the forerunners of the super heroes of the...
Palaeography is the study of ancient writings and manuscripts
John Obadiah Westwood was a pioneer scholar in this art, organising and reproducing old English texts and their artwork, such as the Book of Kells to show to the general public.
In 1843, he published the beautiful Palaeographia Sacra Pictoria, which...
The 19th C was the heyday of amateur botanising. It was a particularly acceptable pursuit for gentile young women, and collections or artful displays of dried flowers and leaves are often found amongst rare books of the period. Albums are sought after and rare.
The Victorian enthusiasm for ferns was...
Around the middle of the 19th C, expansion of the British Empire was in full swing. Despite the Opium wars in China, unrest in India with the mutiny in 1857, and the conflicts in the 1850s and 60s in New Zealand over Māori resistance to settlement and land purchase, immigration...
Amongst all the sports, cricket is something rather noble and grand. At its best, and putting aside body liners, underarm bowling and sledging, there is something rather noble.
The recent clean sweep of India by the New Zealand test side was particularly grand.
In the mid 19thc, there were world...
110 years ago this month, in August 1914, World War I broke out, only a few weeks after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28. New Zealand declared war on Germany on August 5, as a Dominion being an automatic partner in the British declaration
...
An understanding of infectious diseases and epidemics was greatly advanced in the 1800’s through the knowledge gained by surgeons, travelling abroad with the Royal Navy and the military, and with new fields of colonization.
One little known fact, is that successful introduction of smallpox vaccination into Australia, was facilitated by...
While H G Wells was happy to caricature himself, he was less happy to have others make fun of him in the course of scathing book reviews. Hilaire Belloc, humourist critic and author, was also a stout catholic and anti-evolutionist.
In reviewing Wells’ 1920 Outline of History, Belloc attacked it...
How much can you squeeze into a life? William Colenso arrived in New Zealand in 1834 for the Church Missionary Society, armed with a printing press.
He was a missionary, printer, explorer, botanist, politician, was married but also fathered a son by his wife’s maid. He was accordingly dismissed from...
While April may be the cruellest month in the Northern hemisphere, in the Antipodes it’s the heart of autumn, and instead of new growth the mind turns to preservation. The last of the stone fruit, vine-ripe tomatoes, figs, feijoas, peppers and lemons suddenly seem over-abundant. Preserving, and making chutneys and...
Few explorers escape some sort of controversy, and Richard Byrd started out his extraordinary career of exploration by claiming to have been the first to fly over the North Pole in 1926. Evidence since then suggests that he got close but not near enough, and was probably guilty of fudging...
Among the observers and participants familiar to us at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, was an Irishman, raconteur, trader, businessman & eventual Land Court Judge, Frederick Maning.
He arrived in the Hokianga from Hobart in 1833, as a trader. In 1840 when Hobson came to Hokianga to collect...
The Ashes are underway. This is one of the most engaging of international sporting contests, England versus Australia, the home country versus the rowdy colonists. Except of course that this year the England coach and captain are both Kiwi colonial boys.
We have some early cricket related autograph letters/signatures, plus...
read more about CRICKET, THE ASHES, CRICKETING RECORDS & PEOPLE, & MISS ROSELIE DEANE
As we celebrate 70 years since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquered Mt Everest, last week, only 6 years before, on Jan 1947, Hillary and his climbing partner Harry Ayres, stood on the summit of Mt Cook in New Zealand’s Southern Alps, Hillary’s training ground along many fine mountaineers who...
In 1848, the first daguerreotype made in New Zealand was attempted, that of Eliza Grey, wife of Governor George. It failed, but shortly after, studios were established in Wellington and one in Auckland set up by Isaac Polack, nephew of Joel Polack, the early trader and writer.
In 1866 Walter...
In 1814, about 10 years after Lord Nelson’s death and having lived in a ménage with him and her husband, Lady Emma Hamilton was deeply in debt. She was selling off her possessions, and published the Letters of Nelson to herself, resultingly turning society even more against her.
Among the...
Amidst the battles and blood of the Napoleonic Wars, there was always time for great literature. Colonel Sir William Robe commanded the Royal Artillery in Spain in the Peninsular War. After taking part in Wellington’s victory over the French at Salamanca on 22 July 1812, he led his men into...
Charles Dickens was the great Victorian entertainer! His books usually first came out in serial form, holding his readers in suspense, issue after issue. They were then collected and published as bound copies, filling the shelves of libraries on both sides of the Atlantic.
The first editions of his novels...
As Waitangi Day approaches, we might wonder what the Bay of Islands looked like at the time.
This panorama, was designed by artist Robert Burford,. and first exhibited on a huge scale, in 1838, in London’s Leicester Square, for the admittance fee of one shilling.
Our original 1841 woodcut double...
As the Australian Open hits headlines, we deal with TENNIS in a past era from our varied stock
Between the wars, one of the centres of London social life was Sussex Lodge, home of Sophie, Lady Wavertree (later married to New Zealand tennis player and politician F.M.B. Fisher, living in New...
